Prokhorov Hopes Nets Will Be Worth $1 Billion in 5 Years

Mikhail expects quite a healthy return on his investment in New Jersey. The NY Daily News (via Forbes) explains: “We all know about Mikhail Prokhorov’s goal of winning a title in five years. But he has another landmark to reach by 2015: to make the Nets worth $1 billion. According to excerpts of a recent Forbes magazine article in Russia, Prokhorov said the Nets will still operate at a deficit while in Newark. But once they move to Brooklyn, they’ll be making $20 million per season – ‘a conservative estimate,’ Prokhorov said. Here’s the translated excerpts, courtesy of the Nets. ‘I hope that this asset, which I bought for $200 million, will be worth at least $1 billion in five years. We got in at the right time. Brooklyn is a country unto itself. Even the Americans themselves say that. It’s the center of immigration. It has a unique energy to it. Tens of millions of people who now live in the US came through Brooklyn. When I’ve travelled around to different cities, people have come up to me and said, ‘We’re Brooklynites. Give us a great Nets team and we’ll root for them. The structure of the deal is such that, before the move to Brooklyn, we plan to have a certain budget deficit. That’s built in. But from the time we move to Brooklyn, the team becomes profitable.'”